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Economy

Tim Geithner was complicit in Lehman’s accounting fraud, (and see this), and pushed to pay AIG’s CDS counterparties at full value, and then to keep the deal secret. And as Robert Reich notes, Geithner was “very much in the center of the action” regarding the secret bail out of Bear Stearns without Congressional approval. William Black points out: “Mr. Geithner, as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since October 2003, was one of those senior regulators who failed to take any effective regulatory action to prevent the crisis, but instead covered up its depth”

Pensions for the elderly are among the few benefits that have not been slashed, though they have been frozen since last year. The Spanish are known for their strong family networks, and most grandparents are eager to help, unwilling to admit to outsiders what is going on, experts say. But those who work with older people say it has not been easy. Many struggle to feed three generations now, their homes overcrowded and the tensions of the situation sometimes turning their lives to misery.

“The Turkish police are watching the border, but with their eyes closed,” said Ahmed al-Debisi, a Syrian pharmacist and opposition member based in Antakya, who is trying to clandestinely make gas masks out of Coke cans and cotton balls, in case the government of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, unleashes chemical weapons.

“We have a shortage of every kind of doctor, except for plastic surgeons and dermatologists,” said Dr. G. Richard Olds, the dean of the new medical school at the University of California, Riverside, founded in part to address the region’s doctor shortage. “We’ll have a 5,000-physician shortage in 10 years, no matter what anybody does.”

Also, those now leaving college are finding few jobs. Only 54 percent of those age 18 to 24 are employed, the lowest share since data began to be collected in 1948, and the unemployment- rate gap between this demographic group and all working-age adults is the widest on record. Only 49 percent of graduates from the classes of 2009 to 2011 found jobs within their first year out of school, compared with 73 percent of those who graduated three years earlier. About 54 percent of bachelor’s- degree holders under 25, or about 1.5 million people, were jobless or underemployed last year.

To get a more precise sense of what college costs, we need to do two things. First, we should look at "net-price of attendance," which subtracts scholarships and financial aid from the whole cost of a year at school. This is essentially the budget that attempts to take into account the real cost of a dorm room, late night trips to White Castle, Andy Warhol posters for decorating, and beer money, along with tuition. Once we have that figure, we should break it down by family income level.

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This summer has shown just what can happen when those built-in tolerances for heat, moisture (or lack of it) and wind are exceeded.

1.A jet stuck on the tarmac as its wheels sank into asphalt softened by 100-degree heat.
2.A subway train derailed by a kink in the track due to excessive heat.
3.A power plant that had to be shut down due to lack of cooling water when the water level dropped below the intake pipe.
4.A "derecho", a severe weather pattern of thunderstorms and very high straight-line winds, that deprived 4.3 million people of power in the eastern part of the United States, some for eight days.
5.Drainage culverts destroyed by excessive rains.

Past attempts to forecast the possible costs of climate change have been largely inadequate. They failed because of unanticipated effects on and complex interconnections among various parts of critical infrastructure.

If you care to join the dots a pattern emerges. In the Australia we had the Port Arthur masacre. The half-wit Martain Bryant was the fall guy. The terrified masses begged the politicians to disarm the population. Any opposing view was demonised.

In the USA you have had the theatre butchery. The perpetrator appears in court with his hair painted a theatrical orange.

The argument is framed in terms of the honest citizen versus the criminal element. Never in terms of a well armed starving mass that the government has to control.

Is it a conspiracy? I think that the legislators have a feeling in their waters that they had better disarm the population even if they cannot bring themselves to utter the obscenity of famine.

Civilians might be suprised to find out that Agent Provocatreur is a profession. One can get training in the art. My unit had to deal with them in Africa.

This is what I meant when I said that sometimes things are not as they seem.